


Broken Hearts

by Royal_Ermine



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angsty Schmoop, Fluff and Angst, Heart Attacks, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Bucky Barnes, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 01:42:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13203033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Royal_Ermine/pseuds/Royal_Ermine
Summary: A short pre-war angsty fluff story with a sick Steve, a protective Bucky and a revealing prediction.





	Broken Hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Builder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Builder/gifts).



> This is a special New Year's gift for Builder, as thanks for this warm and unique individual's friendship and company during 2017. I'm not accustomed to writing their sickfic genre so apologies if I have flouted a few conventions along the way.

“Steve? Steve? Are you home?”

Bucky had managed to pull a double shift. His boss thought an extra freighter was coming in that afternoon, but when it didn’t he was good to his word and paid up anyway. He’d been in high spirits all the way home…up until now.

Twilight had fallen during the half hour it took him to rush back from the docks and their crummy old tenement building was bathed in the dying embers of a cold winter’s day. Even before he’d reached the door to their apartment he’d noticed something missing. Normally he’d scent the comforting aroma of Steve’s culinary sorcery several paces from their door.

But the frigid air that pinched his cheeks as he kicked off his boots in the darkened hall was undisturbed by Steve’s presence, bereft of his brightness, movement and colour. No word cheered his arrival; no laughter welcomed his lover home.

Creeping anxiety prickled the back of his collar, as his eyes searched nervously around the living room and adjoining kitchenette, briefly peering into the bathroom, before reaching the final destination.

Steve lay rigid on his back, the eerie half-light from the bedroom window reflecting against the cold sweat of his cheeks; his breathing sharp between gritted teeth: short gasps punctuated by little hiccupped sighs.

“Stevie?....Stevie, sweetheart?”

Bucky flew over to the bed taking firm hold of his boyfriend’s hand. Steve held each arm tense across his chest almost as if he were protecting his brittle rib-cage.

Steve yelped, his eyelashes fluttering open

“Stevie…oh God…baby…baby…tell me what’s wrong?” What hurts?”

His voice, like his breath, came in short little bursts, painfully forcing themselves out of his throat.

“Heart…my…my heart…my heart”

“Your heart hurts?”

“Like…like someone’s…like someone’s stabbing…stabbing me in the chest”

“I’ll go get a doctor!”

Steve gripped Bucky’s hand for grim death “NO…no doctors”

“But we can afford one”

“I know…I know…what’s…wrong with me” he sobbed in short staccato.

Earlier in the month, the kindly consultant who lived in the block next door had offered to take a look at Steve for free. He was a cardiologist at the general hospital, the kind of specialist even a double shift at the docks couldn’t have afforded.

“I’m sorry, son” he’d said, soberly “You got a very weak heart, probably brought on by your asthma and having to fight for breath all the time. Pain medication will help with your symptoms, but there’s no hospital in the world that could fix you. Not until they invent heart transplants or something”

Bucky gulped. He’d been there too. He knew exactly what Steve meant; he just didn’t want to admit it. Not to Steve, and even less to himself. He’d never give up, even if the situation was truly as hopeless as the doctor had said.

“Can I make the pain go away?”

“You already have, honey…you already…have” he sighed

Bucky swept the damp gold of Steve’s hair out of his eyes and planted a chaste kiss on his clammy forehead.

“Oh Stevie…I love you, I love you SO much”

Steve’s breath rattled in his chest, but the desperation of his gasps began to ease just a little.

“How long have you been like this?”

He shook his head. Watching the clock hadn’t been a priority. Bucky could see his pencils and sketchpad sitting idle on the windowsill, unopened, and if he hadn’t been sketching in the best of the daylight, which was several hours ago now, then…

“I…I…” he rasped “I’m sorry…I didn’t clean the apart….apart…”

“None of that matters” Bucky grunted.

“But…but I didn’t…I didn’t even…I didn’t even cook…”

This time Steve’s sentence stuttered to an ending without his boyfriend’s interruption. He swallowed thickly, his face turning pale…

“Buck…Buck… I’m gonna puke…” his voice rose in panic.

“Oh sweetheart…it’s okay, I’m here for you…”

Bucky swept his boyfriend up into his arms and rushed him over to the bathroom. Steve started to retch and claw at his throat”

“It…it burns”

“I know honey…if you’ve not eaten or drunk anything it’s gonna….”

Steve hiccupped a pungent splash of bile onto his shirt-front as Bucky effortlessly spun him around and over the toilet bowl. Holding him gently but firmly he waited whilst Steve’s frail little body spasmed out his stomach lining in wave after wave of dry heaving

“It’s okay, it’s okay honey” he soothed into Steve’s neck “I gotcha. I gotcha”

As the retching dissipated, Bucky massaged slow calming circles between Steve’s shoulder blades.

His body began to shudder again, but not from the sickness.

“Oh honey…I’m so sorry” he sobbed.

“Sorry? For what, sweetheart?”

“I’m…I’m so weak, and pathetic…you…you deserve…you deserve better…better than me”

“Shhhhh….baby no....no….don’t you ever say that” Bucky turned Steve to face him, cradling his body against his own sturdy frame “You’re everythin’ to me, darling. Till the end of the line, remember?”

Steve swallowed back the acid in his mouth “But what if this is the end of the line?” His eyes grew wide with fear.

“It won’t be, Stevie. I promise. I promise. You got lots more years of love left in you”

Steve’s breathing started to slow.

“You want to lie down again now?”

“I…I been in that bedroom…too…too long. Can we…can we go lay on the couch?”

“Sure thing, baby”

Bucky bore his boyfriend into the living room and settled him upright against the couch cushions.

“You think you could manage a little water? Maybe a sip of milk? Just to take that burn away?”

“I…I dunno but…” he nodded his head.

Bucky returned with half a tumbler of water.

“If you can manage some of that, then I’ll get you a few drops of milk in a minute. Just…just sip this real slow okay?”

He edged the glass against Steve’s lips and tilted it carefully towards him. While steadying his chest, Bucky lightly pressed a palm against his boyfriend’s fluttering heart. He could feel the beat of a broken-winged hummingbird; weak; thready; irregular. Little wonder that his Stevie suffered so.

“Baby…I need you to understand something…” he said, setting the tumbler back down on the side table “You never have to suffer alone. You hear me? If you’re feeling like this again, you tell Mrs Potts next door, okay? She knows people at the docks who can go and get me”

“I…I can’t have you…missing your work ‘cause of me. How will we live?”

“My boss knows and he understands. He’s a good man; not like that previous one; he’s not heartless”

The phrase triggered an ill omen. Steve stifled a cry; a wave of pain wracked his body, his little arms stiff, clawing desperately in all directions from the torment.

“Stevie!”

For a whole minute, Steve was unreachable; insensible, like a trapped animal, writhing and twisting his fragile body away from inescapable agony whilst Bucky looked on, frantic yet impotent to defend his boyfriend from the affliction destroying him from within.

As the worst of the pain subsided, Steve could hear Bucky’s anguished sobs, and a new pain slipped in beside the old.

“I’m…I’m hurting you…with this…”

Bucky gently placed a finger on Steve’s lips and shook his head.

“Just…just a bad…bad choice of words, that’s all”

Steve sighed heavily “You sure? Sounded more like the truth to me…I don’t know how much longer…how much longer I’ll even have a heart. Maybe…maybe it’s better this way”

Tears trickled down Bucky’s cheeks “Shit Stevie” he growled, his voice ruined with emotion “Don’t you…don’t you fuckin’ die on me okay? How many times do I have to tell ya? If your heart breaks, then mine will break too. You’re the love of my life, baby. There aint no other, and never will be”

“Damnit…damnit Buck…don’t you…don’t you tie yourself…to a corpse”

Bucky’s stare bored into Steve’s very soul “Now you listen to me, Steven Grant Rogers, and you listen good. You’re not gonna die. Something will happen and you’ll be strong again. You gotta trust me about this”

Steve wanted to say something cynical, or maybe just placatory. But he couldn’t. Bucky was too good and pure and loving for that. Instead he let himself curl into his boyfriend’s gentle embrace.

“We’ll never be parted, baby” he whispered into Steve’s ear, rocking him back and forth, his voice like a lullaby “There’ll be a miracle, and then your heart’ll be as strong as mine, stronger even. You mark my words; you’ll be a superhero for me one day, my Stevie.”


End file.
